CHICAGO (July 26, 2015–4 pm CT): Physicians have developed an analytical tool to identify surgical patients at risk for costly respiratory complications, which may help hospitals avoid those complications and their related costs as Medicare and commercial payers exert increasing pressure on them by eliminating payment for patient complications that occur after operations and may extend hospital stays.

CHICAGO (July 26, 2015–4 pm CT): Long waitlist times often lead to a higher risk of death for children awaiting heart transplantation. However, the team at Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, cut wait times by revising their waitlist protocols for donor heart size and patient severity status and presented results at the 2015 ACS NSQIP® Conference.

CHICAGO (July 26, 2015–4 pm CT): Surgical teams at Northwestern Memorial Hospital are decreasing the UTI rate by paying scrupulous attention to the use of catheters before and immediately after operations. Their efforts are believed to be among the first reported in the country to target UTI prevention in the OR by decreasing catheter utilization.

CHICAGO (July 26, 2015–4 pm CT): According to two new studies presented today by researchers at the 2015 American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) National Conference in Chicago, ACS NSQIP provides more accurate data than administrative data for driving surgical quality improvement in hospitals.

CHICAGO (July 22, 2015): ACS strongly believes that patients and their families deserve to have meaningful information available to assist them in selecting the right surgeon and responds to two public interest groups who launched websites promising to assist with surgeon evaluation.

CHICAGO (June 11, 2015): The American College of Surgeons and John A. Hartford Foundation announced they will conduct a four-year initiative that will lead to improved care of older surgical patients through a standards and verification program for hospitals. The Geriatric Surgery Verification and Quality Improvement Program will produce a framework generalizable to all hospitals—regardless of size, location, or population served—to improve the quality of care they provide to older adults undergoing surgery.

CHICAGO (June 5, 2015): Joseph P. Vacanti, MD, FACS, received the 2015 Jacobson Innovation Award of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) at a dinner held in his honor Friday, June 6. Dr. Vacanti, the John Homans Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, is also the director of the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication, the codirector of the Center for Regenerative Medicine, and the chief of pediatric transplantation, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA.

CHICAGO (May 28, 2015): Traumatic injury is the leading cause of death among people under age 45, but if trauma physicians could deliver plasma to these injury victims within minutes of their arrival in the emergency room, more of them would stand a better chance of survival.

CHICAGO (May 22, 2015): The Recovery Room, a podcast produced by the American College of Surgeons (ACS), has released a new episode addressing how bariatric operations effectively treat obesity in pediatric and adolescent patients.

CHICAGO (April 14, 2015): A new ACS initiative uses a structured teaching and verification program that utilizes engaging media and self-assessment checklists to educate patients about self-care for complex wound conditions.

CHICAGO (March 26, 2015): The American College of Surgeons (ACS) is optimistic that much-needed Medicare program reforms are within reach following today’s vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. ACS congratulates representatives for working together to develop a bill that implements meaningful reforms to the Medicare program, including permanent repeal of the broken sustainable growth rate formula (SGR) used to calculate physician reimbursement.

CHICAGO (March 16, 2015): The Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons has granted its 2014 Outstanding Achievement Award to a select group of 75 accredited cancer programs throughout the United States. Award criteria were based on qualitative and quantitative surveys conducted last year.

CHICAGO (February 27, 2015 – 10 am CT): The majority of hospitals participating in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project (ACS NSQIP®) improve surgical outcomes over time, and improvement continues with each year that hospitals participate in the program, according to a new study published online today in Annals of Surgery.

CHICAGO (February 6, 2015): The American College of Surgeons (ACS) recently released a statement emphasizing that the allocation of trauma centers should be based upon the needs of the population, rather than the needs of individual health care organizations or hospital groups.

CHICAGO (January 7, 2015): Today ACS announced the launch of a new initiative aimed at stimulating more young surgeons (defined as under the age of 45) to become involved in the organization and increase membership.